Life issues, not temple, prevail in north Gujarat
BANASKANTHA/PATAN/MEHSANA: No, the envisioned Ram Temple in Ayodhya isn’t an issue that hits one in the face in agrarian North Gujarat. Much of the public discourse here is about sustenance; oppression and denial of fair opportunity.
Out in the fields that grow cumin, fennel and psyllium seeds, it’s an angry world locked in a contest with urban affluence. What mocks people is their sense of poverty in contrast with nextdoor abundance.
They feel their lives are shorn of the spice and aroma of their farm produce. Unlike in urban pockets, debates at line-hotels on highways and tea vends in the interior aren’t about incessant political name-calling that drives TV chat shows. They’re about promises made — but not kept.
Along the over 200 km stretch from Ahmedabad to Banaskantha through Mehsana and Patan, outrage over the 2015 police action to quell the Hardik Patel-led Patidar stir isn’t residual. It is palpable!
The full picture emerges when one factors in rising unemployment, farmers’ angst, shoestring existence of fixed-salaried teachers and junior policemen, graft at local level and privatisation that makes education far too expensive.
It’s not for nothing that Rahul Gandhi gets an attentive audience when he flags these issues. The questions he asks of Prime Minister Narendra Modi are the ones the people have.
Not surprising then that across age groups and gender, one hears voices of support for the Congress — not as much out of love for it as for teaching the BJP a lesson.
Predictions of support for the ruling party rest mostly on humungous logistics at its command and Modi’s larger than life aura. Mostly muted and sporadically loud, resentment is as much against the PM. But his drawing power is recognised by his detractors who, in a first of sorts in over two decades, aren’t hard to come by. Some among them feel however that Hardik is as much of a crowd puller without the support of a party machinery.
A tussle between the ‘established and the emerging leader’ will be on display soon in the region that goes to polls on December 14.
What should worry the BJP is the tangible alienation. The prevailing mood having its genesis in police action against the Patel youth, turns upside down the conventional wisdom of public memory being short.
A proof of it is the BJP’S foremost Patidar face and deputy CM Nitin Patel sweating it out in the party’s bastion of Mehsana. The dilemma of the very affable former state minister, Jay Narayan Vyas is no different at nearby Sidhpur in Patan.
They’re both banking on Modi to turn the tide. It is hard to miss the BJP’S bid to use the Temple issue and Mani Shankar Aiyar’s low-brow jibe at the PM to polarise voters on religious and caste lines. But the strategy isn’t paying dividends. Not yet.
One reason for that, perhaps, is the inclusive appeal of the antibjp trident: Hardik, Jignesh Mewani and Alpesh Thakor.
Hardik is a campaigner, not a contestant. But the other two are candidates in Banaskantha (Vadgam) and Patan (Radhanpur) respectively.